Amazon Cuts Down on Prime Members Sharing Their Benefits
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
That being said, when my kids are older, it would have been nice if we could grant them this stuff also, and as far as I can tell that is not the case. Only the two adults get the prime, while the kids get just the shared digital library.
What's interesting is that Amazon has been doing nice things in the kids department like the "Amazon Allowance."[0] Effectively a parent can give a kid some money, and they can use it on Amazon however they wish. So not being able to grant the kids prime on their account effectively means that a lot of the allowance will wind up going to avoidable postage charges (particularly on smaller orders of sub-$25, which I'd imagine are things an allowance might be utilised on).
I almost don't wonder if Amazon shouldn't change prime in the following way:
- Prime postage is now tied to a physical address (not Amazon Account), regardless of sender (e.g. gifts are now prime eligible).
- The prime account holder gets a certain number of prime "credits" they can use to send prime packages to other physical addresses, like friends and relatives.
Effectively this means if you pay $100/year your address is now Prime flagged. So no matter who sends the item, it gets prime postage. So all household members, or people sending you gifts.
Such a change would be controversial, but it would solve the "household problem" since now whoever lives there gets the prime no matter what their relationship to the account holder or similar.
Eg in the last couple weeks:
We needed wanted programmable thermostats at the family vacation house, had those sent there so I wouldn't forget them.
Wanted some new pens at the office, had a few packs of Pilot G-2s sent to office.
Needed a new scale for the kitchen since my 10 year old one stopped working, delivered to home.
Kid was staying with grandma for a couple of nights and needed some more diapers, had those sent to her house.
Not all that uncommon for a week or two for me.
If prime locked down to a single address I would seriously consider dropping it and I've been a member and big fan of it pretty much since it launched.
YMMV, but agreed that multiple location options is really nice... also, makes sending gifts easier, when it goes where it needs to. I don't use the media stuff much, but I order a lot on amazon, via prime.
This isn't going to go over well. If you think the original Amazon Household was abused, this would be a lot worse. I live in NYC in a small building (no doorman), so I get everything delivered to my office, as do most of my coworkers. If 49/50 of the people working on my floor dropped Prime because we get it from just one person, Amazon won't be happy.
http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-probl...
Looking forward to see what happens when microSD cards can carry entire studio libraries.
We're getting to where there are physical limits to go much smaller as it is in memory, I don't think we'll really see a 10x improvement or more in portable memory to be honest.
Free shipping sharing is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/primecentral
Household settings are here: https://www.amazon.com/mn/dcw/myx.html#/home/settings/paymen...
That's not to say it doesn't make business sense. The problem is that monetization is now tied to walking the fine line between positive experience and pissing people off...e.g. they have made Prime worse from the customer's perspective. New ways to suck is not a good kind of innovation.
We have a Roku 3 with the Amazon Instant Video app as well. I've never watched anything through the Amazon app but she does occasionally (again, using my account).
Knowing his will make things a bit easier, I guess, although we had pretty much worked around it just by sharing my account. Had I known, though, I probably would have shared the shipping with my (and perhaps the girlfriend's) parents.
The customer is not always right...